March 16, 2018Ellen Dostal – BroadwayWorld Playwright Wendy Graf is best known for her uniquely dramatic works such as PLEASE DON’T ASK ABOUT BECKET, ALL AMERICAN GIRL, and NO WORD IN GUYANESE FOR ME. But, in her latest world premiere, UNEMPLOYED ELEPHANTS – A LOVE STORY, she takes a lighter – and more formulaic – approach toRead More

March 16, 2018Deborah Klugman – Stage Raw Thomas More was an exceptional man — a lawyer, writer and scholar who rose from the merchant class he was born into to become a chancellor for King Henry VIII. Friends with Europe’s great intellectuals, including Erasmus, who published his work, he is remembered today for his novel Utopia (aRead More

March 16, 2018Jonas Schwartz - TheaterMania Progress treads so slowly it almost feels backwards. Lorraine Hansberry’s award-winning play A Raisin in the Sun premiered almost six decades ago, but American culture still grapples heavily with racism and other prejudices. The Younger family of the play grabs at the American dream, but society keeps moving the brass ringRead More

March 15, 2018Margaret Gray – LA Times The writer and actress Sarah Jones is gorgeous, about 8 feet tall (at least it seems that way) and rail thin, with a wide mane of hair. When she walks onstage at the Geffen Playhouse, where she is performing her one-woman show “Sell/Buy/Date” through April 15, it’s impossible to imagineRead More

March 13, 2018Neal Weaver – Stage Raw Stephanie Alison Walker’s stirring drama is set in Buenos Aires in the 1980s, when Argentina was ruled by a ruthless military junta. Anyone who spoke out against the regime could be taken into custody and “disappeared,” and even those who privately disagreed with the government and its policies were inRead More

March 13, 2018Terry Morgan - Stage Raw One of the nice things about being a theatregoer in Los Angeles is the diversity of theatre one is able to enjoy. On any given weekend, there are shows up at East West Players (which specializes in Asian American work), Ebony Repertory Theatre (which explores the African-American experience) or atRead More

March 10, 2018Neal Weaver – Stage Raw These three one-acts by Sharon Yablon are all set in the bleak Mojave Desert, and they share an equally bleak vision, albeit touched with fantasy and surrealism. Read more… Now running through March 25

Archive for Reasons to Be Pretty

Playwright Neil LaBute is so prolific, and has created in so many different and varied media, that it’s virtually impossible to generalize about his work. (His program bio is downright intimidating.) But in many of the scripts for which he is best known—Fat Pig, In the Company of Men, The Shape of Things, and Your Friends and Neighbors—he seems to be convicting his characters of succumbing to other people’s values, cruelty, callousness, indifference, and moral cowardice. Read more…

Margaret Gray – LA Times

New York is only three hours ahead of L.A., but in theatrical time, the distance often seems greater. Broadway events, like starlight from distant galaxies, can take years to reach us.

Case in point: We’re still gathering evidence of a great emotional shift in the work of Neil LaBute, whose “Reasons to Be Pretty,” nominated for the Tony Award for best play in 2009, has at last arrived at the Geffen Playhouse, where it proves to be a humane, tenderhearted coming-of-age story. Read more…

Myron Meisel – The Hollywood Reporter

More in sorrow than in anger, and more in annoyance than rancor, it must be said that the talented, thoughtful and tirelessly prolific Neil LaBute finally made his bones on Broadway in 2009, scoring a Tony nomination for best play with probably his least bold and uncharacteristically pandering effort, Reasons to Be Pretty. At least that’s the view based on this conscientiously mounted local premiere. Read more…

Jonas Schwartz - TheaterMania

Reasons to Be Pretty, Neil LaBute’s only play to be mounted on Broadway, asks very few questions about its characters, leaving the audience to fill in the blanks — and not always in the characters’ favors. The play leaves you longing for more depth from the script, but luckily the talented actors at the Geffen Playhouse shed light on their roles despite the murkiness of the text. Read more…